stephen kotkin is professor of history and international affairs at princeton university and maria murillo is a professor of science at columbia and is also serving as director for the institute of latin american studies. without further ado i will hand it over to tim to talk about his book before. >> thanks a lot. it's really a pleasure to be here and i want to thank you in the palace for taking time out of your busy schedules particularly during a pandemic. i really appreciate your effort and hearing what you have to say about the book. the simplest way to describe "weak strongman" the limits of power in putin's russia is that it's explainable. translate what i think is the best academic research over the last decade for a general audience on a host of interesting questions. spuyten really popular? do you elections matter? the's propaganda ineffective cliques why are relations with the left so fraught. the book should have something for you whether you identify as a russian or is someone who has russian experience. there's no shortage of books on russia so why should you read this one? t

stephen kotkin is professor of history and international affairs at kinston university, and maria murillo is professor of political science at columbia and is also serving as director for the institute of latin american studies. so without further ado i will hand it over to cama was going to talk a bit about his book before the other commentators chime in. >> thanks a lot. it's really a pleasure to be here, and i want to thank the organizers and the panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules particularly during a pandemic, so i really appreciate your efforts and i look forward to hearing what you have to say about the book. the simplest way to describe "weak strongman: the limits of power in putin's russia" is that it's and explained her book. it translates what you think is a best academic research on russia over the last decade for a general audience on host of interesting questions. is putin really popular? do elections matter? is propaganda effective? why our relations with the west so fraught in similar kinds of questions? the book should have something for you whether you

so, professor kotkin kin -- do you have -- you look at russia as a former colonial country like britain and france and the difficulty of dealing with that. >> give yourself a little more credit, dr. frye. you do this. rhetorically you hide your achievements by going after the simplified ignoramuses who need a certain view of russia or who are wedded to it. you actually have the sophisticated even-handed judicious russia is normal country but it has specificities, too. your rhetorical package doesn't do full justice to our achievements in my view but i've already stated that. let's not imagine that you ignore russian history, russian tradition, russian institutions, that you ignore put's permit. in fact you have all of that -- putin's experiment you have that in the book and it's rightfully there. so, let's not beat ourselves up here with a stick as if we're trying to get the most out of steam here in the cabana. >> vicki? keith? do. >>ized you want toened. >> i agree. i think the material -- the most -- the chapter on foreign affairs because that's where the political role of russia bec